BannersBroker… verdict: scam

Well, it’s not an accusation I level lightly, but, I have no option but to conclude that BannersBroker is in fact a scam.

To summarize my experience with this ‘ground breaking revolution in internet advertising’:

I did the OPPOSITE of what most people are doing with BannersBroker. I didn’t sign up for an ad/pub combo, or as an advertiser. In BB-speak, an ‘advertiser’ is someone who pays them money to buy blocks (of various colours) that will get ‘filled’ with advertising from other sources. The buyer then gets a portion of the revenue made from selling this advertising.

That is the way most (if not all) of the people I have read about use BannersBroker.

But I didn’t do that.

I happen to run a high traffic website – the leading lottery site LotteryCanada.com. We get around 300k VISITORS (not hits) a month according to Google Analytics. We do well now with traditional online ad networks placing ads on our site. I thought I would use BannersBroker to see if we could make a little extra money.

So, I signed up for BannersBroker as purely a ‘publisher’. Almost immediately I ran into difficulties as no one I emailed or spoke to on their support chat seemed to understand how a publisher in their system worked. One support person said I had to pay to be a publisher. I said that was like the Wall Street Journal paying Macdonald’s to have an ad in the paper.

Anyway, after about 10 days the good people at BannersBroker approved my site and gave me a chunk of (error full) javascript to place on the site. Which I did. And I left it running for 8 weeks.

After a couple of weeks I was curious as to how we were doing. It was then I realised that BB offer NO STATS of any kind for publishers to see how many impressions, clicks, etc they have generated. Nor a way to see the running tally of revenue. Every other ad network we use does allow this. In real time usually.

So, I contacted BB support. I was told that BB only offer a monthly report (which of course makes it impossible to tweak the placement of ads). So I said fine. When would I get that? I was given a hard date of August 20th. That date came and went without a word from BB. So I contacted support again. I was told that their servers were undergoing some maintenance so things were delayed ‘this month’ and I would get something September 1st.

September 1st came and went and… nothing. Repeatedly chats with support failed to produce a report. No money was ever credited to our BB account (forget about any ‘real world’ bank account).

To ad to this, here are the kinds of ads we saw:

This is the ad we saw at least 80% of the time.On rare occasions we would see scintillating ads like this.

Unfortunately the only conclusion we can come to is that BannersBroker is a scam. Without publishers like us showing the ads how on earth can their ad network be making money? In addition, without advertisers buying the ad space, how can they make money?

I believe that BannersBroker is a classic ponzi scheme – people who take money out are actually just getting money from people who have bought in.

We have since removed BB from our site. I hope that anyone reading this has the good sense to stay away from BannersBroker, or, if you have already invested, take your money out if you have the chance.

13 thoughts on “BannersBroker… verdict: scam”

Excellent. I have been researching this prior to investing. This is the first thing I have come across from the viewpoint of a publisher of their so called banner adverts. Seems obvious now that the whole thing is a scam and pyramid scheme. Thanks for valuable warning

Hi Phil, This was a very interesting read. This provides further proof that banners broker has no real product, and is making money through membership only, in classic ponzi fashion. I have a friend who signed up as an affilliate and when I showed him this he came back with an interesting response which he had obtained from one of the UK leaders of Banners broker, Jamie Waters. This is what he said regarding your blog:

“The problem is he has no idea how BB makes its money
He requested to join the BB publisher network – that advertise bb banners and companies – not the larger rental network”

I have looked at the publishing signup side and there doess not appear to be two levels of publishing available as this suggests. I suspect that his response was a complete fabrication. Do you have any comments about this, it would be interesting to hear them if you do. Thanks a lot, good work.

I have been following the banners brokers scam for a while now and this is the first I have heard from the other end of the business… ie an advertiser.

The trouble with banners brokers is that it is being sold to people who know nothing about the subject or internet marketing, and are falling for the lies and BS because they just don’t know any better.

I would make a bet that 95% of banners brokers investors would not have been able to read this post and understand it, unfortunately you have to know IM to spot BS IM, and no one who actually knows IM is going to fall for a scam like BB.

I emailed jamie Waters many times and I can share the replies with your site if you need. He is blinded by the money and doesn’t see the truth. Please let us all know if you get any favourable reply from him. He is misleading his followers. He is seriously putting his credibility on line here, its not good enough to say well i didn’t know, I have warned him many time. thx

I joined BB a year ago and did nothing with it because at that time BB charged a UK VAT tax of 20% to fund your ewallet….I never did take this any futher even tho people said BB have to charge this tax as they are a UK company….What BS, their VAT registration details were false, I believe now they have changed the rules and now its not payable probably because someone queried it, and just think how much so called tax money they illegally raked in from UK people